Reimagining Educational Leadership in the Caribbean

In Reimagining Educational Leadership in the Caribbean, Canute S. Thompson contends that postmodernism ought to be the guiding construct in considering leadership in education and management. Postmodernism challenges convention, embraces otherness and champions the diversification of authority. Educational leadership in a postmodern era must be informed by an approach of radical inclusivity and power sharing. This approach is predicated on the assumption that students are capable of offering meaningful suggestions for improvements in the processes of teaching and delivery of learning and that practitioners possess the knowledge and experience to inform policy. At the heart of this proposed new approach to educational leadership is the contention that zones of exclusive expertise have been overturned by the advent of postmodernism: the focus of assessments and the usefulness of ideas should not be on whose ideas they are but on the merits of these ideas, regardless of source. Drawing on his original theory of Proposition MRM (modelling, respect, motivation), Thompson explores issues that face educational and other leaders in the Caribbean in a manner that has not yet been undertaken so extensively. The author examines the relationship between Proposition MRM and various elements of educational policy and practice, including critical thinking, ethics, pedagogy, sustainable development, and technical and vocational education and training. Reimagining Educational Leadership in the Caribbean is practitioner-sensitive and is written in a non-technical style to be accessible to educators at all levels and others interested in social change.